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RACHEL CARSON

One hundred years ago, on May 27, 1907, Rachel Carson was born in the small farming town of Springdale, Pennsylvania. She would go on to spearhead the contemporary environmental movement, publishing influential books that combined a deep reverence for the natural world with an acute awareness of man's place in itand of his potential to upset its delicate ecological balance. "Rachel Carson was one of the reasons why I became so conscious of the environment," Al Gore has written. "Her picture hangs on my office wall among those of the political leaders, the presidents, and the prime ministers... Carson has had as much or more effect on me than any of them, and perhaps all of them together."